My Shopping Routine that Maximizes Savings, Rebates & Cash Back

My shopping routine is a little intense, but since I’ve started using it religiously I’ve been earning a lot more rebates, saving a lot more with coupons, lowered my grocery budget by 25% while eating better food, stopped shopping in the grocery store except for quick trips, and I’m saving a lot on gas when I have to fill up the car each week. So, while it’s a little complicated, I definitely think it’s worth the time. First, here’s the list, then I’ll go into how each step works.

1.Check out sales for Kroger

I used to shop at a lot of stores, but I don’t anymore. I explain why in this blog post.

2. Coupons & Rebates

I love using coupons, but I hate spending time on them. My rule of thumb is I try to save 50% on all snack foods and convenience foods I buy for my husband’s work snacks and our travel snacks. I use my SwagBucks coupons to earn me SB if I can, or I use my own if we’re talking about printable coupons, but I also use eCoupons pretty much every week.

3. Order Groceries

ClickList and I are BFFs. Seriously. I pay $4.95 per order and they get all my groceries ready and get them loaded into the car for me. I can use paper coupons, so I can still take advantage of great sales and coupon savings combined and it’s awesome. I save so much time, and with having Logan and Autumn both, it’s just easier to not have to coordinate nap time and all that around big grocery store trip. I already have a pretty solid routine that helps keep things sane with me working from home with both of the littles and I don’t like to mess with that too much if I don’t have to.

4. Amazon gift cards

I do a lot of shopping on Amazon, so I realized a little while back that I was missing out on getting Fuel Points for the money I was already spending anyway, so I started getting my Amazon cards there. I usually wait until they are doing a double or quadruple points weekend, saving my Amazon budget money until the cards give me a ton of fuel points, then buy them and get tons of fuel points.

5. Cash Back

I love using my PayPal card, and since it’s a debit card I don’t have to worry about anything like the temptation to overspend because it’s a credit card or anything like that. But I get 1% back, which is great. 1% isn’t a ton, but it’s better than the nothing I would have gotten with my usual bank card. We don’t use the rebates for our ‘normal’ budget, but I apply them to our debt snowball.

6. Fuel Points & Gas Savings

Once I’ve gotten the groceries, I go to the Kroger gas station and do our weekly fill-up, where I rarely save less then $0.40 a gallon. Of course, I also use my PayPal card here and get 1% cash back. It adds up!

7. Amazon Shopping

I love using companies like Ebates, but I don’t ever use them for Amazon because I’ve never gotten money back from them for my Amazon purchases. I guess I just shop in the wrong categories. I use my SwagBucks account to make any purchases and it adds up pretty quickly. To maximize my SBs earned using the principles I talk about in this post, I make a lot more and save a lot when I redeem them for gift cards… it’s a great system.

There are amazing benefits to using receipt rewards, like free gift cards! These gift cards paid for more than one week of groceries, special at-home date night treats and other splurges. We’ve also used them to pay off debt.! I use to ReceiptPal and ReceiptHog, although I’m a lot more faithful to to using ReceiptPal because they automatically take my email receipts from my email inbox, and since I use my PayPal debit card for almost everything, basically all of my transactions are automatically sent to them. I like ReceiptHog too, but automatically earning gift cards is a lot easier. Right? 😉

9. Snack Order

I realized after Logan was born that I had been sabotaging our grocery budget by not getting snacks. We are very snacky people. Between me being hungry all the time because I’m a human milk factory, and Ian wanting to have something quick and easy to eat on his breaks at work that travels well – it all added up to us spending a lot of ‘just a little snack’ money that wasn’t in the budget. I did two things that made a huge difference.

The first thing I did was get a Love with Food Subscription. I tend to get into a habit where I buy the same things week after week, which is fine by me but Ian loves variety. He talks a lot about how when he was a kid how he ended up eating a lot of the same things over and over (especially pasta) so it just makes him crazy. It’s one of his quirks, and I don’t really mind. So I decided to get the Love with Food membership so we would have fun new things to try, but I wasn’t going to be spending a fortune.

10. Ordering online with Jet and Boxed

I love ordering from Jet and Boxed, it’s like having a Sam’s Clup or Boxed membership. I love Jet because you can buy small or large quantities, which is great when I don’t need huge quantities of things. I always meet the minimum for free shipping, so I really save a lot.

I love ordering in bulk from Boxed. Their things are a lot more like a big box store (go figure) and they come in big packs. I love them for their wine selection and household items like laundry soap, they are a staple for normal day-to-day items.

This system has helped me cut my budget so much. It has been a huge help toward us getting out of debt faster, because it’s just that much more we can set aside for student loan debt. Every little bit counts.

4 Comments

Wow it sounds like you have a cool system here. I used to be into couponing but that wore me out. This sounds like it’s more manageable and convenient. I really like your system. Thanks for sharing. =)

Yeah I used to coupon too, but it was really time consuming and I didn’t get nearly as much healthy food like I do now. This has worked out to be a much more financially beneficial system for my family overall. I hope you get some great tools from it. 🙂